The initial results from the collation of utilities figures give a surprising amount of detail concerning the activities that have happened within AT’s building at South Queensferry. AT's electricity and gas figures date back to 1976 and 86 respectively and are surprisingly complete giving a vast data set that will hopefully show major trends occurring on the site.

Electricity

The first problem that we thought that we might have was from seasonality. This proved not to be the case and as can be seen from figure one that it is the month of January that has produced the only anomaly. This must be due to the factory shutting down for Christmas so we are going to have to re-calibrate the number of days that we have allocated to January.

The graph of daily consumption below, in figure two, shows a steady gradual increase in the use of electricity by the facility. Still, we have the problem of the January drops but otherwise an almost continuous rise in power consumption is shown until 1990 where we have a dramatic drop. We know that the total square metre area of the building has never dropped and so we must assume that some change in practice has occurred. Once area figures have been measured it will be possible to produce a graph of units per square metre. Still, for now we can see a number of points where a drop has occurred and it is these that we are interested in.

It is important when collecting information that results that are obtained are in a usable format. The most important thing for long term comparisons is that figures are recorded in a unit form as opposed to a cost basis. This eliminates the vagaries of the charging by the supplier and also any taxing by the government. The graph in figure three contains the same information as the daily unit graph yet trends appear very hard to see. Utilities bills generally contain information to do with the date on which the readings were taken and the units as well as the costs. Spreadsheets will be used to calculate the number of days between each reading and therefore this will allow for the creation of a units per day graph. This also eliminates any problems that would be created should the utilities company fail to take a reading for a month or even longer, as is shown on this graph in the summer of 1986

Seasonality is evident with these figures as can be seen in figure five though again January shows the dip. This creates problems because trends become more difficult to see. To compensate for this we have taken an 11 month moving average which can be seen in the graph. When examining the graph dips are evident in 1990 and 1996 with further dips in between. If the graph below (figure six) and the graph of electricity consumption per day are compared both show this same dip in 1990 and it will be of great interest to discover what caused this. Through checking records we can see that various events occurred in the building maintenance schedule. All the buildings were fully re-clad in late 1989 and also some cooling units were upgraded at this time. It is the maintenance of the building that will be investigated in great detail soon. AT has provided information as to the estimated savings from some of the alterations that they have already carried out. It is hoped that the larger savings will be able to be linked to the figures that we are creating now.

Initial results from the water utilities (figure seven) investigation show continuous growth followed by a single dramatic drop. This single drop is attributed to poor fitting of cooling equipment that resulted in water not being properly re-circulated. This was rectified in 1996 after which AT’s water bill dropped from over £8,000 per month to under £1,500.

Hewlett Packard is an example to other companies in the way that they are able to provide information in such detail over such a long period of time. Because we are able to examine such a huge data set we hope that once other information is gathered we will be able to draw some major conclusions concerning both the machinery within the building and the insulation of the building itself.

The scale of the plant at South Queensferry allows for us to show savings on grand scales but with small changes to working practices it is possible to make considerable savings.

The ten diagrams on the next two pages show the changing face of Hewlett Packard over the past ten years. These images have been created by taking the CAD images that AT update when any major design changes occur and assigning different colours to the different purposes that the building is used for. The groupings have been done in an attempt to bring together parts of the factory that have similar uses and similar power consumption. The general trend over the whole series is of an increased area being given over to office space as both storage and manufacturing gradually decline. This is just one of a series of buildings that are now on site and so does not give a full picture of the activities being carried out but does give a clear insight. It is hoped that these trends will help to trace back changes that have occurred in the power consumption over the same period. It should be noted however that changes have occurred in the number of employees over the same period. This has caused the area that is allocated to each person to decline.

Building One was opened in March 1966, a two storey 100,000 sq. ft construction, with

Metal Fabrication, Plating Shop, Goods In and Stores on the lower floor. As the building was constructed into a hillside, the south end of the upper floor returned to ground level.

Building Two was opened in April '71 and provided expansion space of 100,000 sq ft, butting on to Building One with its temporary west elevation wall removed to provide an open environment on both floors.

Building Three was opened in Sept.‘83 another 100,000 sq ft building, plus 8,000 sq. ft basement which housed treatment plants etc. for the new Printed Circuit Board Fabrication Shop. Buildings 2 & 3 are separated by a fire wall and the site layout was essentially reversed with a new reception, entrance road and services provided in Building 3 project, along with a new Goods In facility.

Building Five was started in 1985, to accommodate the Microwave operation which had been created in 1983. High growth and profit plans for both the Telecoms and Microwave businesses were in place but the significant downturn in T & M, and AT in general, caused the suspension of work for two years. The building was eventually completed and occupied in April ’89, providing a further 130,000 sq. ft of space on two storeys together with a covered link / walkway connecting to Building One.

Building Four, a 30,000 sq ft Cafeteria Building was originally planned to be part of the Building Five development but was delayed, reduced in scope and size and finally opened in February ‘90 allowing the closure of the 1966 Cafeteria in Building One.

The Department of the Environment has produced a guide for power consumption by buildings. The figures provided are a good representation of typical buildings for typical uses. In an attempt to make these figures more comparable to AT’s situation we have converted the consumption figures into kWh and also eliminated any variance from the facility’s working hours. The conclusion from these figures is that AT is either a highly energy efficient air-conditioned office or an energy inefficient factory / office.

The building plans that can be seen to the right are of the ground floor of buildings phase 1-3 with the upper floor being underneath. The total usable area of this building is around 30,000m². The light green colour represents machinery involved in providing cooled or warmed air. The amount of equipment required has increased as the offices have taken over from manufacturing. It is with facilities like these that companies the size of AT can benefit from the economies of scale. Boiler houses and cooling systems all have a large initial cost and then are most efficient towards their peak power output. In the 1994 image, four new buildings to the right of the main building are seen for the first time. These are part of the new air handling units installed to cope with the increased demand for cool air. Heating the factory, though necessary, has not proved a huge problem. It has been the cooling of the factory that has been the major energy requirement. Numerous heat sources, primarily computers and monitors, are now present on site, all of which require to dissipate heat to the environment. It is these green areas that will be the high power consumers within the factory as they are providing both the heating and the cooling for the entire building. These areas are rarely used by the staff and as such have been fitted with movement sensitive lighting to reduce power consumption.

The  AT animated Gifs have been placed on a separate sheet due to the size of the images. It is unadvisable to open this file unless the computer has a 56.6K or greater. 

Conference rooms are common within the building throughout the period for which we have information. Staff use these rooms for training and for meetings. For power consumption these rooms probably vary considerably as they are either bare rooms with only desks and lighting or they are computer filled rooms. Without knowing the exact content of these rooms it will prove difficult to class these as either high or low power consumers. With this type of room power savings have been gained through sensors being placed within the room which switch lighting off when the room is empty. When these rooms contain computers an active policy of switching computers off as opposed to logging off will reduce power consumption.

The office area has grown as the company has increased the volume of telephone sales and help-lines. Each of these has required a computer and associated monitor and therefore both consume power and require to be cooled. The advantage of these areas is that they are open plan and therefore require less power to heat. This also allows for air conditioning to work to its fullest advantage because the air is free to move around to such a large degree.

Storage areas have gradually declined over time in association with the decline in manufacturing, because it is no longer needed to store goods prior to dispatch. Most of the current storage areas are for equipment or for departments and are not goods awaiting dispatch

Corridors have changed little over the 10 year period. The number of defined corridors has increased but these probably already existed through work spaces. As the company has increased the amount of office space the corridors have been given set routes.

Free space has varied considerably as changes have occurred though no clear pattern is visible. Free space has been created as departments are moved out of the building and into other parts of the facility.